Well, it took far longer than I would've liked, but I officially now have two baseball cards online and available for purchase at my atomicmall.com store! Now, for those of you who actually clicked on the link to my store, you're probably thinking something to the extent of, "What's the deal with this? He's linking me to a video game store, not a storefront for sports cards!"
Now, don't worry, you're not crazy, but there is some method to my madness. I promise!
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I have had a history of, and am currently, selling video and computer games online as well. Since I wanted to get these up ASAP, I simply added them to my existing storefront. These are the specific cards I've put on thus far, and they're linked to their individual listings:
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| Topps 2012 Series 1 Shaun Marcum #262 Milwaukee Brewers |
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| Topps 2012 Series 1 John Danks #311 ChicagoWhite Sox. |
The biggest challenge in getting the cards to scan in was the white borders. Since the top inside of my scanner's cover is white, my software kept insisting that the border wasn't really part of the image! I don't want my prospective customers thinking that I cut the borders off of all the cards before I sent them! Granted, I think that most people are smart enough to figure this out, but I've learned in the world of e-commerce, it is best to factor things out to the lowest denominator, if you catch my drift! In any case, I solved this problem by putting a piece of black construction paper down behind the card on the scanner, and it solved the whole problem. The other problem that I've encountered is the lettering on the players' names. These cards, like last year's set, have shiny silver lettering, that for whatever reason insists is going to come out black on the scans. After searching through various card listings for this year's set, I've come to the conclusion that nobody else seems to have done much better with this situation, so I figured I might as well go ahead and run with it the way it is for the time being.
What's Up Next
Obviously, the current store setup isn't ideal.
I do want to keep a combined storefront for both video games and sports cards at atomicmall.com for a couple of reasons. First, I first heard about the Atomic Mall when it was still being developed and before it went online. As such, I had the opportunity to have input in how the site was put together and run. It's actually pretty interesting to see what goes into developing an Amazon-style website from scratch. Therefore I admit I have a bit of personal interest in the success of the site. Second, and possibly more importantly, as a "charter member," as I'm called, I get to have a permanent discount on seller fees on my first storefront. I was thinking of renaming my store to be something to the extent of "Stu's Cards and Games." This would be a broad enough name to allow me to sell both products and still be in line. It would also potentially allow me to sell other related products in the future, like board games, figurines, collectible card game cards, etc. I like keeping my options open. I'll have to redesign a logo for that, but I think I can manage
With a combined storefront, it brings the problem of shipping fees. My current gig is to include shipping costs into the cost of the product, and subsequently offer free shipping. This works rather well when you're shipping video games, but not so much for cards. With cards, people know that if you buy more than one card from a particular seller, they're going to stick them all into a single (hopefully) padded envelope, and their additional cost for sending the additional cards is very low. My two cards are currently $1.75, but if somebody wanted to buy both, they would know that they're paying shipping twice, for all intents and purposes, and they probably won't like that, and there's also no incentive to buy more than one card at a time. Therefore I'm thinking of switching to charging more for shipping, but then offering a shipping discount for each additional card they buy in the same transaction. For example, they could pay $1 shipping for the first item, and $0.25 for each additional item purchased. I haven't entirely decided how to handle things on the video game side of things, plus there's the time involved in changing the shipping settings for all the products already online, so it may be a little while until I get this implemented.
Stay Tuned...
As I get more of this figured out, I'll keep you guys posted. If anybody has any relevant ideas that might help, feel free to let me know! I make no promises as to whether I'll implement your idea or not, but I'll at least consider it.
